Today I had a pleasure to meet a young talented Latino who recently moved to Cincinnati.

The 23-year-old conductor Tito Muñoz is currently assistant conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, appointed in May 2006 by music director Paavo Järvi. A native of New York City, he began his musical training at age 13 in the Juilliard School's Music Advancement Program. A scholarship recipient, he studied violin and composition at the Manhattan School of Music preparatory division, winning the Richard Kimball Composition Award. As a violinist he also attended the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, the Kinhaven and Apple Hill summer festivals, was a teacher at New Jersey's Elizabeth Morrow String Festival, and made numerous appearances with the leading orchestras of New York and New Jersey. He continued his violin studies with Daniel Phillips at the Aaron Copland School of Music, Queens College. Formerly an assistant conductor of the ISO Symphonic Band and apprentice conductor of the New York Youth Symphony, Mr. Muñoz was a faculty member of the French Woods Festival of the Performing Arts, working with the symphony orchestra, concert band, and chamber music program and conducting fully staged Broadway musical productions. He has conducted the Queens College Orchestra and Chamber Orchestra on several occasions and has collaborated with such artists as Charles Neidich, Daniel Phillips, Marcy Rosen and Gil Shaham as well as cross-over vocal group Amici Forever. During the summers of 2004-2006 Mr. Muñoz was a student at the American Academy of Conducting at Aspen where he studied with David Zinman and Murry Sidlin and participated in masterclasses with Leonard Slatkin, David Robertson, Robert Spano, Asher Fisch, George Manahan, and John Williams. Winner of the Aspen Music Festival's 2005 Robert J. Harth Conductor Prize and 2006 Aspen Conducting Prize, he will return to Aspen in 2007 as assistant conductor of the festival. A participant in the 2006 National Conducting Institute, he made his professional conducting debut with the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center. In August 2006 he made his Cleveland Orchestra debut at the Blossom Music Center. He will make his Cincinnati Symphony debut in February 2007.

We wish Tito all the best in Cincinnati and are happy to have him with us.